Yeah, the de-ranking is essentially just to gate the scubs & to sort of keep the 1% of sweats happy, all-in-all. But even this is a total failure, right. Scubs can still make it in the 40’s as others have mentioned, & get carried regardless of this gating system. So, this line of reasoning makes literally no sense. If they really wanted to gate the shtty ones out… Maybe they could have harsher system restrictions in place, where you have to beat a Maelstrom so many times solo or something wild to prove your worthiness in Havoc’s something innovative like this instead for the sweat-lords, that way it would really gate-keep the shts out. Other than that, the de-rank is extremely pointless & adds literally nothing of value in my mind, but a more anti-fun & toxic experience, which it shouldn’t be that way. Like I’ve mentioned, let us pick the maps, modifiers & ranks, etc. That way, there’s vastly more freedom & mostly everybody wins. I’ve gotten 40 like about 3-4 times by now & it’s an absolute slogfest. If they want to keep player retention down… Maybe don’t f players over with cosmetics scams, games bugs/server issues & have more daily updates to keep them coming back for more, instead of radio static for months or more at a time. How’s that? It’s not that hard to do, but for FS it is apparently.
There’s no good reason for a ranked ladder, much less one with with a de-ranking mechanic, in a 4 player coop PvE game, there just isn’t. If it’s felt that there’s a need to gatekeep high difficulties, this is one of the worst ways to attempt that. It certainly doesn’t incentivize continued or additional play on the part of users, but does actively incentivize all sorts of toxic and excluding behaviors.
As with many things in Darktide, it feels like something a senior dev or manager came up with and is absolutely infatuated with, and nobody wants to tell them its stupid until it becomes an open bleeding public sore.
Havoc needs a re-work. Which will probably steer it into a completely brain dead direction since even the feedback FS receives is gate-kept by the chosen chaos warriors who think they know best.
IMO, Havoc could have predetermined loadouts to select from instead of build-a-bear workshop. Hand crafted missions but that will never happen, its already a dead-end ranking sweat-fest.
Still in its current state, for pubs, a 50/50. Either you get someone needing to be carried, or you have a Chad. When it works it works, but there is 0 consistency IMO. (unless you fancy a pre-made)
I’ve only gotten to 40 Havoc once when it was first implemented. Then I got bored, and just started playing everything under Havoc. I never came back, because they put me right back to 0 or something (haven’t played in like months). I just didn’t feel the need to or was incentivized to do it. The rewards weren’t worth it at all in my mind, plus deranking was an awful experience with random pubs. It was too much player RNG for me to even trust that for a steady experience. Yeah, nobody even asked for Havoc mind you…
Lol..game just crashed the whole team back to hub and now none of us can start a mission as it’s apparently “ongoing"…and not only did I lose 1 strike because of FS potato net code…but it seems to have knocked me down an entire rank AND another strike?! Wtf.
if havoc really was a way to cater to vermintide modded difficulty players why the hell does derank even exist? modded difficulties allowed you to just go in without any rank stuff
i feel like havoc was just made for no one so you have to force yourself to 40 to even have any fun
The thing is that clearly this system isn’t working at all. The mode is basically on life support. It’s rare to even see many 40 games at all, at least where I’m at in North America. That could potentially work in theory, maybe as a test run or something. As somebody just mentioned, yeah, the RNG is a massive gamble & this gate-system doesn’t guarentee anything of course.
Honestly I think the only reason is they believe it’s pLaYeR rEtEnTiOn if they just keep kicking the ladder away so we have to go back to an identical grind.
I cannot describe how much I hate the demotion system. Utter garbage.
@FatsharkJulia please can you put this at the top of the pile with some new maps?
For those of us who just want to play the crazy difficulty but can’t because of teammate RNG. thank you 
yeah i hope they hear that derank sucks cause we’ve been complaining about it since havoc launched
i just hope we dont have to complain for years still
It’s actually pathetic to keep this system just for the crux of replayability. There is so much more they could do instead of an anti-fun system. Like, you said, new maps, modes or whatever else they can cook up. I know their team isn’t that massive, but they have constant updates for VT2 & leave this game in the dark practically. If they only treat this game like VT2, we’d be in a better place overall, at least in terms of content.
funnily enough derank absolutely destroys any replayability it could have, i don’t want to climb to 40 for the like 4th(?) time
OMFG. I just played another and whole team wiped within seconds and my rank just dropped a whole rank again?! Wtaf is going on.
And no I’m not bug reporting. Jesus is need to be paid to report bugs at this stage. I’d be reporting more than playing. They need a QA dept
Yep it is pure filth.
They deliberately lock the hardest content that we all want to play behind a resetting grind wall. It’s the usual cheap and nasty RNG rEtEnTiOn casino nonsense
They can’t just be giving out dockets, plasteel, and diamantine for free now. Gotta earn it.
i’m entirely alright with havoc not giving rewards if it means derank is removed i just want to play the game i have 300k plasteel lmao
Havoc effectively doesn’t have rewards (after your penances).
There can’t be a significant overlap between people that play high havoc and players that need in game crafting mats.
It’s why I see the “gatekeeping scrubs out of 40” argument as nonsense. Most players just push for the penances and drop it. If it’s fun, they play to play it, not for other reasons.
Exactly, the only reason I want to complete Havoc is for the penances. The game mode itself is just annoying more than anything for pretty much every reason that has ever been stated here.
If people who find Auric/M too easy get mad and leave if they removed those penances then they weren’t really in it for the challenge and this game would probably be better off without ‘em.
Can we get a Truth Nuke in here? There’s someone that could use it.
This. So much this.
Whatever positive may possibly exist (and I’m not sure there is one), the number of negatives far outweigh it. Hell, the instability of the game itself makes derank a steaming pile of “screw you player base” without even getting into all the other reasons.
Get. Rid. Of. It.